


White Noise

by UnluckyAmulet



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Claustrophobia, Cuddling, F/M, Fluff, Gundham being a dork, Panic Attacks, Reader-Insert, reader is female
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 19:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13371846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnluckyAmulet/pseuds/UnluckyAmulet
Summary: If you have to be stuck in a busted elevator, you supposed you could have worse company than Gundham Tanaka.





	White Noise

“What’s going on here?!”

“Ooh la la!”

“Oh my…”

Your faces flooded with colour as wolf-whistles and yelling swarmed your ears. There was so much noise that it almost (but not quite) drowned out the muffled expletives by your ear.

In hindsight, it did look pretty bad.

You and Gundham Tanaka, laying on the floor of the elevator, his arms wrapped tightly around you, your face buried in his trademark scarf and lying in-between his legs and both of you blushing like hell.

There was a good reason for it, of course, if everybody would calm the hell down and stop shrieking and catcalling you (and you can distinctly hear muffled squawks of indignation from Fuyuhiko), you would explain.

It all started like this…

~

"Goddammit."

The stairs were out of order again. You didn't really know how stairs could be, but they were taped off and everything. You bit down hard your lip and tapped your foot on the ground, frustration mounting as you sighed and turned away.

Well, it seemed like you were going to have to get in the lift.

Which was…

You know.

Fine.

Sort of.

Well, if the ride was just a few floors and therefore only a couple of minutes, at least. You couldn’t help it – small spaces combined with movement freaked you out and made you feel nauseous. You couldn’t exactly say when it had started or why, but for the most part you managed to avoid having to deal with it. Unfortunately, your luck had run out this time.

With an irritated sigh, you turned on your heel and headed for the elevators with a purposeful stride that did not match the twisting of your guts at all. Despite yourself, your palms were slick with sweat and you could feel a strange kind of tightening in your muscles, as if preparing to suddenly break into a sprint. You wiped them on your jeans.

_It’s just a short trip. You can handle this. Don’t flip out._

Despite your strict pep-talk, the fluttering of anxiety took flight in the pit of your stomach as a cheerful ‘ding!’ rang out and the doors slid open. To your immense relief, the only other person in the lift was Gundham and you knew he wouldn’t pay a ‘lowly mortal’ like you any mind. He was probably far too busy holding an animated conversation with his hamsters. His eyes momentarily darted in your direction as you stepped inside, but he said nothing. You smiled and rolled your eyes to the ceiling. Even a guy as unique as him was oddly predictable despite how eccentrically he behaved.

“Tried the stairs as well?” you asked casually, glad that this elevator didn’t have one of those annoying voices that announced each floor in an especially patronising tone.

Gundham huffed.

“It appears that yet another inconvenience arose on my way to the uppermost floor.” He said, folding his arms and addressing this remark to the control panel to his left. “I had no recourse.”

You saw that the button for the floor you wanted was already lit, so you folded your arms and leant again the walls as the doors slid shut again and the lift started to move. You began to feel a little silly, making a big deal out of nothing. This was fine. Everything was just fi-

And that’s when it happened.

The elevator had only been moving for a few minutes when it suddenly stopped. And not gently, either. It came to such an abrupt, shuddering halt that in nearly threw both you and Gundham off your feet. He regained his balance faster than you did, his boots squeaking on the floor as he hurriedly righted himself.

“What the hell was that?!” you blurted out, only just catching yourself before you were flung to the ground.

“Kh…! I feel a dark energy closing in!” Gundham said in his dramatic patois, though his words were a little muffled by his scarf. “Could it be that the neverworlds of hell have finally sent a worthy adversary?!”

“Ohhh no.” you muttered, pressing your back against the wall.

The elevator was shuddering and Gundham’s hamsters were squeaking and skittering around in the folds of his scarf, obviously distressed by the noise and erratic movement.

But they had nothing on how you were handling things.

Panic slammed into you, like a blow from an oncoming vehicle, rending your senses paralysed with shock. The only thought that went through your mind was-

_NO._

_Nononononono._

You didn’t know how or when you ended up on the floor. It was like you’d jumped ten minutes into the future through your haze – all you knew was that you were crouched on the floor of the lift, back against the wall and your forehead buried into your knees. That was bad – but what was far worse was that you were shaking uncontrollably and hyperventilating, as though some unseen force had shoved your head underwater and was just waiting, waiting, waiting for the bubbles to stop...

Over the ringing whine in your ears, your heard Gundham’s deep voice breaking through your fog of sheer, illogical fear;

“…manner of possession is this?” he said, his voice fading in and out, like when you twist the dial and find that crackling white noise between radio stations.

 _"What, never seen a panic attack before?"_ … was what you wanted to say, but the best that you could manage was a garbled string of words that, in hindsight, probably made no sense at all.

It seemed to you like the walls were closing in, threatening to crush you and Gundham into nothing, like in a few minutes all the oxygen in the elevator would vanish. You wanted the floor to fall away, anything to let you out of this metal prison that rocked and creaked in a way that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.

Gundham seemed to get the gist of what the problem was, however. He was staring down at you with this intense, hawkish look that normally might have made you very nervous; if you didn’t feel like your heart was due to explode at any moment. While you tried to blink away the spots dancing in your field of vision, superimposed over everything else, Gundham reached out a hand – the one covered in bandages. After only a moment’s hesitation, he rested it on the crown of your head.

You blinked.

Was he…

Was he _petting_ you?

Yes, yes he was.

It actually…felt really nice. Something about the motion of his fingers carefully smoothing through your hair, the comforting weight of his hand…you couldn’t help but lean into his touch, closing your eyes for a moment. Gundham made this muffled noise – it might have been surprise or discomfort, but he didn’t push you away. You heard rustling as he slowly sank into a crouch.

“What are you doing…?” you mumbled, your heart still thumping far harder than needed deep within your ribcage, but not quite at the breakneck gallop it was before.

“My demonic powers have faced far more fearsome beasts than the evil energy besieging your life force!” Gundham boasted in that weird way of his, though his attempts to sound ominous were ruined by the slight tint of pink visible against his pallid cheeks. “This is nothing compared to the wrath I endure from the Four Dark Devas of Destruction!”

“I’m not a hamster,” you said, but you could feel yourself smiling.

Gundham does that weird laugh of his and although you still don’t exactly feel great, you’re not quite at the level you were before. You raised your head, about to tell him thanks, when a very unappealing groaning of metal sounded from overhead, almost as if something was struggling under an immense weight that it just couldn’t take any longer.

And then the lights went out, plunging you, Gundham and the Four Dark Devas of Destruction into complete and total darkness.

_“Oh, fuck!!”_

You suddenly jerked away from your crouching spot by the wall, as if by doing so you could somehow physically escape the noise and whatever disaster would shortly follow it, and before you knew what you were doing you pressed your face into the juncture between Gundham’s shoulder and neck. He flinched when you did this and you waited for him to yell at you to get back immediately (not that you could go very far), but he didn’t. He just sat there, half-sprawled against the wall, your weight pinning him there, but he seemed too stunned to move.

“Sorry,” you blurted out in a raspy voice, immediately drawing back, but unable to stop the erratic huffs of breath as you spoke. “I forgot- I just…”

"Hmph. Cease your incessant squirming, mortal," Gundham demanded, and there was something about that deep, booming voice of his that somehow managed to penetrate the engulfing numbness around your brain.

"I thought you didn't like being touched..." you muttered, your voice coming out hoarse.

You chanced a look at him and if he was a little flushed before, it was nothing to how he looked now, his face alarmingly pink beneath his black and silver hair. Gundham pulled his scarf almost up to his eyes, steadfastly refusing to meet your gaze.

“Perhaps…under these conditions…my powers will quell the deadly poison that rots foolhardy mortals…” he mumbled and you didn’t know what the hell he was talking about anymore, but he cautiously wrapped an around your lower back. “…Hold on.”

Gratitude flooded your system and you nodded sharply, deciding not to ruin the mood by asking more questions, and returned your head to its previous position, breathing in the scent of Gundham’s coat, which smelled slightly of fresh sawdust. He awkwardly rubbed your back as you mainly focused on controlling your breathing and biting the insides of your lip, the pain giving you something to steady you.

“Thanks,” you whispered, after what seemed like a long time had gone by, but it could have only been a few minutes.

Gundham didn’t answer, he just grunted (which you felt rumble through his sternum), but he wasn’t shoving you away like you were contagious, which you supposed was more than enough of a ‘you’re welcome’. You felt something furry brush your cheek and tickle your earlobe – one of his braver hamsters was sniffing at you, obviously unused to any scent besides its masters. Despite your myriad of other, less pleasant emotions, you couldn’t help but want to grin a bit at the sensation of a little rodent skittering about so close to you. The Devas seemed calmer than before, perhaps because Gundham himself was keeping his composure admirably, though his fingers were tight was they gripped your jacket.

And then, as the silence began to get so heavy you could almost feel it on you, the lift rumbled again, though far less alarmingly than before. You opened your eyes by a fraction and heard Gundham inhale, when the lights suddenly came back on.

You were both squinting at the sudden burst when you felt a familiar swooping sensation deep in your stomach – the lift was surging upwards again and you could have cried in relief.

You were only just getting your bearings and acknowledging the glorious fact that in a minute you’d be out of this contemptible box, when the lift doors pinged open.

Kazuichi was crouched near the buttons to open the doors, holding a wrench in one hand, obviously having just fixed whatever had gone wrong in the first place, with a look of absolute shock on his face. And behind him, all of them gawking shamelessly at the death-grip you and Gundham had on each other, it seemed like the entirety of your class had just so happened to be waiting for the lift to come up. Had they been looking for you two this whole time or was this another one of Monokuma’s tricks?

If course, Gundham wasted no time in springing to his feet and yelling at everyone to shut up or he’d unleash his ‘true powers’ on them or something- you staggered out of the lift and, upon noticing that you looked like you might fall down, Mikan, Ibuki and Mahiru quickly circled you and insisted on helping you into a nearby room to sit down, Ibuki running off to fetch you water that you knew you weren’t going to bother drinking.

You risked a glance over your shoulder as the others (with Hajime and Byakuya trying unsuccessfully to contain the commotion) continued to tease Gundham, a couple of them walking into the lift and peering around in confusion, loudly pondering about why it broke.

A rueful smile settled on your lips as you looked away again. While it was probably a good idea to leave Gundham be for now (at least until his face went back to its normal colour), you decided to make sure he had enough hamster food to last him for the next three months, as thanks.

And next time, you’d just climb the tape and take the goddamn stairs.  



End file.
